The good burghers of the Japanese town of Okuizumo have suggested a giant replica of Michelangelo's David might do well to slip on some underpants, lest kiddies are left traumatised by an eyeful of the "big and unexpected" statue.
Okuizumo, in Shimane Prefecture, has enjoyed the 5-metre tall nude since last summer. It was …

Calm down, it's just a willy...

Copper???

Soon to take a sauna. We stoke ours to 90 degrees centigrade - comfortable, until Girlie throws water on the Kiuas (heater) which is full of stones for heat retension. It has pine benches, no problen. Wood doesn't retain heat. We have to remove metal jewellery before we enter, else it'll burn us.

Heard about a Russian oligarch who had a sauna fitted to his boat. He demanded copper benches.

Re: Copper???

Re: Calm down, it's just a willy...

All I can say is that Japan is weird. Hey, I love 'em, but have you seen gay Japenese porn? 'Extreme' just doesn't do parts of it justice. Yet. there's that odd pixilation. Perhaps they are Southern Baptists at heart. I dunno....

Re: It's just a penis.

Re: It's just a penis.

Michelangelo's David is generally considered to be a good looking chap.

The legend is that he was originally carved with a larger dong, but the wealthy traders who commissioned him grew jealous of the appreciative comments their wives made about him, so they insisted Michelangelo chipped David's manhood down to its current size. Alas, the story is probably not true.

Still, why do the Japanese pixel out genitals, but are fine with demon tentacle rape porn?

Re: It's just a penis.

> Why not celebrate the masculine form?

Kryten: But it's hideous! That's the best design they could come up with!? Are you seriously telling me there were choices and someone said "Ah. There. That's it. That's the shape we're looking for; the 'last-chicken-in-the-shop' look." Shakepseare had one. Einstein. Perry Como sang 'Memories Are Made of This' with one of those stashed in his slacks!?'

Re: Half the population has one

Mathematically speaking I have more than twice the average number of penises found on humans (which is less than 50% as there are more women)

I even have more than the average for men (which is very slightly under 100% - due to disease, accidents, carving knife-related events and very sharp vacuum cleaner attachments, or misplaced curiosity)

Re: Half the population has one

@Crisp - Re: It's just a penis.

Wrote :- "The human body is a beautiful thing. Why not celebrate the masculine form?"

As someone else said, most are not so beautiful. And for many of those people, the sight of a beautiful one paraded for the sake of its being beautiful just pisses them off. Like having a statue of a fat cat guy in a top hat lighting a cigar with a £50 note and placing it in the poor part of town.

Re: It's just a penis.

Re: It's just a penis.

"Still, why do the Japanese pixel out genitals,"

The best example of this is in the anime Eden of the East, where at one point the main characters are running around a half-destroyed shopping mall which is also populated (for reasons that aren't entirely clear, even after you've watched the whole thing) by twenty thousand naked NEETs. And the obfuscation was a sort of scratchy blob over the relevant parts, adding a surreal note to the whole experience.

Re: It's just a penis.

>Kryten: But it's hideous! That's the best design they could come up with!?

Q: What is the knob on the end for?

German scientist: It is to give more pleasure to the man!

French Scientist: It is to give more pleasure to the woman!

British Scientist: It is to stop your hand falling off the end!

Modern fluid modelling suggests the knob on the end has evolved to act as a plunger, removing what might have been left there by a previous gentleman- all the better to promote your genetic material. More civilised than easting his offspring after the fact, as lions have been known to.

This is why you have to keep things in proportion :-)

"The legend is that he was originally carved with a larger dong"

Technically, David's much-derided willy isn't that small- probably at least average length for an adult male. It just looks that way because it's easy to forget the statue it's plastered on is 5.2 metres high :-)

Re: @Crisp - It's just a penis.

Re: It's just a penis.

No. The average human body that's at best pudgy and out of shape is not beautiful. There is good reason that you don't typically see your average schmuck as the subject of high art. It doesn't matter what the age or civilization. Most people simply don't measure up.

The Germans had a great PSA regarding exercise that featured an "average" David demonstrating what lack of exercise would do to you. Nobody wants to see the that version of David.

Re: Half the population has one

Under natural conditions there are more women born but now that half the worlds population in China and India have ultrasound, abortions, and in China a one child policy along with both somewhat turning a blind eye toward little girls mysteriously dying things are a bit skewed sadly. Not to mention it occurs in other countries besides these two as well.

Re: Half the population has one

Totally off topic but having almost half the world's population in two neighboring countries where there are not going to be enough women may be a real geopolitical problem here in the not too distant future. Young men not being able to get laid tends to breed violence.

Re: It's just a penis.

@ apjanes - Re: It's just a penis.

Wrote :- "Most human bodies ARE beautiful, we are just conditioned to think they are not."

Bollocks (if that is the right term to use here). So you are saying that if only in the school playground we had passed round illustrated books of naked warty old geezers, we would have grown up thinking that wart old geezers were beautiful?

I don't recall my parents or teachers "conditioning" me to think that nubile young women were beautiful. In fact it seems to me now that they did everything possible to discourage it, like confiscating pin-up mags depicting them.

@ JEDIDIAH - Re: @Crisp - It's just a penis.

Wrote :- "society at large welcomes this kind of shenanigan so long as it's a female that's being held up as a spectacle."

You are getting out of touch. These days naked females are rare on mainstream media. It just isn't PC. Instead it seems fashionable to show naked men, especially in gay scenarios. Watching TV, my wife and I have a contest in which she counts appearances of naked or part-naked men, and I count the ditto women. She wins.

Re: David's dangler

My hobby is figurative clay modelling. Apparently my style is "neo-realist" - which means the penis is modelled at the same scale as the rest of the body. It's surprising how many people say that it's been made too long. Seems as if all the neo-classical statue "little" ones have affected women's expectations. Men usually have a distorted expectation based on the foreshortening effect of looking down at their own.